From my book No Ordinary Man, a meditation for Good Friday exploring the wonder of the sacrifice of Jesus, wounded for our transgressions.
Reading
Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. And the soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they dressed him in a purple robe. They kept coming up to him, saying, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ and striking him on the face. Pilate went out again, and said to them, ‘Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no case against him.’ So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, ‘Here is the man!’ When the chief priests and the police saw him, they shouted, ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ John 19:1-6a
The meditation of Nicodemus
His back was cut to ribbons,
a criss-cross of bloodied weals,
the skin hanging in tatters where the whip had torn away the flesh.
Yet still he said nothing –
no cry for mercy,
no howl of protest,
no shout of abuse –
nothing!
Apart from the grunts of pain,
the involuntary gasps,
he was silent.
And we were all amazed.
We’d seen hardened killers grovel under the lash,
prize-fighters cry like babies,
but not Jesus.
I have to admit it, I thought he’d crack, for all my admiration of the man;
I never imagined he could take such punishment.
A few strokes, perhaps,
a token resistance,
but then they’d break him and he’d say what they wanted him to,
admit he’d been wrong.
But it never came,
never happened,
never even looked like happening;
and suddenly I recalled the words of the prophet Isaiah,
that great vision of God’s chosen servant
all at once imbued with new meaning –
‘Like a lamb led to the slaughter
and like a sheep silent before its shearers,
so he did not open his mouth.
He was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities,
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his stripes we are healed.’
It was like a flash from heaven,
a ray of sunshine in a dark and dismal wilderness,
for I realised that there, in the face of such appalling suffering and evil,
there in the wretchedness of sorrow and death,
God was at work,
bringing health,
wholeness,
love,
life.
Did Jesus see it like that?
Was that the secret which gave him strength?
We’ll never know.
But I’ll tell you one thing:
it changed my life, seeing him suffer like that.
It made me realise that I had to respond,
had to follow him;
there was no other way.
For I knew it should have been me standing there enduring that agony;
it should have been you,
Caiaphas,
Pilate,
anyone –
anyone other than Jesus.
He poured himself out to death,
cut off from the land of the living,
and somehow, in a way I don’t fully understand,
but a way I shall never, never forget,
he did it for us!
Prayer
Lord Jesus Christ,
we remember your great love shown so powerfully
in that last week of your life.
We remember how you shared bread and wine
with those who, to a man, would fail you.
We remember how in Gethsemane
you faced the awful and awesome prospect of the cross, alone.
We remember how with such humility you endured your arrest,
your brutal interrogation,
your sorrow, your humiliation,
your suffering, your death.
We remember your quiet acceptance of human hatred and evil
directed against you who knew no hatred and had done no evil.
Lord Jesus Christ,
we remember your great love,
and we marvel at how much you were willing to bear for our sakes.
Amen.